It looks like we called it right last year (see here) - E.ON’s outsourcing of its IT to HP was indeed a sign of more things to come from the energy sector. Centrica (British Gas) has now also signed up HP in a $400m (£250m) seven-year data centre migration, that will see the energy & utility company move its IT infrastructure, applications and services over to two HP data centres in the UK, including its flagship air-cooled centre in Wynyard. IT support will be provided out of HP’s offshore delivery centres in India, Malaysia and the Philippines.
HP will provide services to Centrica on a private cloud basis – in other words hosted infrastructure, software and services for Centrica alone, delivered as a utility. HP’s cloud strategy is to move clients on to its hybrid model, where it can also offer its own products and those from third parties to multiple clients, on a ‘public cloud’ basis.
As we pointed out in our report UK Business Process Services: Spotting the opportunities, the energy & utilities sector is one we expect to show opportunities for suppliers in 2011 through investments in IT transformation and billing in preparation for smart metering rollouts. Suppliers like Logica, Atos Origin, Steria and Capgemini are already designing and installing smart metering systems for first movers such as OnStream (part of the UK’s National Grid), BC Hydro (Canada), ERDF (France) and EDF (France). Smart meters will collect a huge amount of additional data and information on customers and energy usage, which suppliers will seek assistance in managing. So the next step, and potentially the big prize, will be taking on the management of the infrastructure and administration of billing and metering for these companies.